Hawaii State Archives Digital Collection Tour: Genealogical Indexes

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The first stop on our tour is the Genealogical Indexes. The online description says this is an index to marriages, divorces, probates, wills, and citizenship records for 1826 to 1929. As with all Hawaiian collections, this is not a complete index.

The dates for most of these indexes are 1915 and earlier. So, if you have early ancestry in Hawaii, you might luck out.

You might recognize some of these indexes as Edgar Knowlton has incorporated them into his books. They have been microfilmed by the LDS Church Family History Library as well.

When you click on a category, you will get a list of files alphabetized by surname. Go ahead and click on any of the surnames. The page you requested is produced. You have the option of seeing the typed version or the scan of the actual page. Note that once you are in an index, you can click through it page by page.

The information that each index entry contains varies. All refer you to a source that should be available at the State Archives.

All indexes are searchable by using the search box in the top right hand corner of each page. Enter a surname into the box. You will see all occurences of that surname from every index in the collection.

It should be pointed out that this collection does not include all the records available for anyone category. For instance, the marriage index includes the records available through the State Archives but not entries from the registry books kept by the Department of Health. The Naturalization index gives those names recorded by the Minister of the Interior, but not the naturalization records recorded via the circuit courts once Hawaii became a territory or through the INS in later years.

While this index isn’t all conclusive, it’s a great start! The indexes will be especially helpful to those researches trying to find events that occured before 1910.